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Celebrating Illustration, Design, Cartoon and Comic Art of the Mid-20th Century

You May Have Noticed...

Wednesday, August 05, 2009

... that I've activated Google Ads for this blog. Its something I decided to try as a way of generating some revenue to offset the costs in time and materials that I've invested in providing the content you find here each weekday. Hopefully this change won't be too intrusive for your tastes. It wasn't a decision I made lightly, and it wasn't my intention to monetize this blog once it reach a certain level of success. At this point, its more of an experiment than anything, but it may prove to be a more palatable alternative to making Today's Inspiration a subscriber site ( which was another option I was considering ). Personally, I would rather keep TI ad-free, but as I explained in my 1,000th post, my passion for researching and writing about the illustrators of the mid-century period is eating into too much of the time I should be spending on making a living. If this experiment is successful, it might be enough to offset my other obligations in that regard.

I welcome your thoughts and opinions on the subject - and thanks to you all for your support and enthusiasm.

13 comments

more power to you, Leif - you do spend a ton of time on this site (along with the others), and is invaluable for research and curiosity-seekers alike. you obviously should be getting paid for it.

the ads don't bother me personally, but my first suggestion is (if you're going to really continue this project for awhile) to move TI to its own address (off of Blogger) so that you can start selling ad space yourself (on sidebars and the like). You have enough readership that I'm sure you could recoup the site's cost, maintenance, and then some.

The ads aren't an inappropriate decision... but what I want to know about is the decision to truncate your feed... which might have been intentional, or unintentional... but either way, it's pretty uncool.

the people that are bitching must have severe arthritis, because I know it hurts like hell to make that one extra click to read it on (i)your(/i) site. c'mon.

in reality, the ads aren't pretty, but most can ignore them, and it doesn't really matter anyway because your content is worth it. also, I think Peteski is referring to the amount that monetizing your blog through Google actually makes. some people may click the ads just out of support for you, but most won't think about it and will bypass them... imo. anyway, this comes back to the suggestion that you buy your own address, add a template, and move all the posts to that new site. then you can market your advertising space and charge whatever you think is appropriate per month/year, etc.

Until you mentioned it I didn't notice an ad for Trojan condoms on the right of your blog. I did notice the inserted string of Google ads beween posts which at first thought was someting you had made, then I realised what was going on.

It might be interesting to compare the great ad art that you regularly post to their crap, but I expect the result will only sadden me. It's how I'm forced to watch TV so I'm used to it. Nonetheless, if it keeps you going and you endorse it, then I support you, if not them.

Good, good - I can't ask for any more than that, Pete and Db, thank you. Incidentally, I'm not encouraging anyone to click on ads - in fact, I discourage you from doing so unless you actually see something you're genuinely interested in investigating further. Google has fraud detection software in place that monitors clicks for authenticity, so just clicking ads to be supportive is actually counterproductive. As Pete says, just ignore 'em.

I don't know if it's related but I thought you should know since you started them, your posts no longer show up in my RSS reader (Google Reader). The titles are there but no content. Before the whole article would show. Just to let you know.

I'm also fine with the ads...but I miss the content in the feed. If you must trim content from the feed, at least list an introductory paragraph and image so I can decide whether to click and read further. Ads in the feed would also rectify the situation.

Lief... was it the discussion on the truncated feed that you were planning to ignore (or not respond to)? I completely support the concept of ads. I know there are options out there to incorporate ads into your feed as well... if that's the reason it's now truncated... Just looking for some kind of acknowledgment that the truncation was intentional.

Yes, the Feed issue is being delt with. I'm currently getting some help w/ this situation from a super-knowlegable friend who is setting up a Feed Burner account for me with some options on how the Feed can be received. This stuff's really beyond me, so please indulge me for a bit and I'll soon have it resolved to (hopefully) everyone's satisfaction. :^)